1950 Census records not showing the birth year
When you are attaching the 1950 Census as a source, it doesn't show birth year, and therefore doesn't allow you to add that info w/o extra steps.
If you click the "record" link, it shows the age is available
example:
Best Answers
-
The 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940 US censuses all recorded age and FS indexed it as a calculated birth year. So it would make it work consistently with the others.
Saying my example is already done so the point is moot ignores the 149 million records that haven't be done yet. Having to do it manually makes it more likely that users will skip it or calculate wrong
0 -
Just noticed that some of these records do include a birth year, but many do not. So it is not consistent within the collection either.
Also realized another reason why the years are important: it helps when matching the people people up; Making sure you have the right people
0 -
I wasn't talking about whether the census was attached or not. I was talking about the fact that all of the people your example was attached to already have conclusions entered for their births. This means that regardless of what is or isn't in the index for the census or anything else you're attaching as a source, Source Linker cannot be used to change those conclusions. There are "extra steps" no matter what fields the index has or doesn't have. (The only existing conclusion that you can change by transferring information with Source Linker is changing "deceased" to a date and place, and that's not applicable to census records.)
There are a lot of things still wrong with the 1950 census index on FS; perhaps they will add an estimated birth year field to all of it at some point. It'd be one thing that the computer is actually good at: doing a simple subtraction.
0
Answers
-
The census -- and therefore its index -- recorded age, not birthdate, and FS made the choice not to calculate an estimated birth year based on that. I have no problem with this: it's easy enough to make the calculation yourself, if you really, really need an estimated birth for a person.
In any case, it's all a moot point for your example: all of those people already have births entered, so you wouldn't be able to transfer anything using Source Linker anyway. Source Linker cannot replace existing conclusions (which is a good thing).
0 -
FS does attempt to calculate the estimated birth dates but finding instances where the census date displayed is wrong. In one case showed census year as 1793 in another shows census year as 2022 and all estimated dates are off by that margin.
In other cases appears only portion of page indexed and some family members listed on census without written last name were omitted as well.
Found page where several people had numbers in name or string of numbers instead of name, not able to edit.
Editing ability inconsistent and appears to vary by frame. At this point viewing every record and not attaching any with errors for anyone in the record and considering avoiding 1950 census all together. This is a problem that compounds previous indexing issues and may never get totally fixed.
0